Just an aging geek, talking about things I see.

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Well, apparently the notion that next year’s Ataribox is just another plug and play novelty act has vanished. To a certain extent, anyhow.

Through their newsletter, Atari confirmed that the new console (Do we call it a console? Huh. I suppose we do.) will retail at between $250 and $300 dollars, feature Radeon Graphics technology, an AMD processor, and a Linux operating system.

Who wouldn’t want to lead their own merciless, awe-inspiring cult to an ancient god of darkness? A respite from the hum drum world—you’d no longer find yourself at the mercy of the modern day rat race. You’d be your own standard bearer to evil. Your own person. Isn’t that really the dream?

Board games used to be relegated to a pretty standard collection of fare: your Risks, your Parcheesis, your Monopolys if you hate your friends and family. But in the past ten years or so, they’ve been part of a renaissance: new board games with more complex ideas and rules are released daily to a fairly mainstream audience. So in this age of recycling and reinventing the wheel, it was only a matter of time before the idea of digital board games took on some popularity of its own.

Pony Island is just the sort of game I was expecting for 2016. After the massive underground success of the 4th wall breaking darling that is Undertale, I was prepared for the onslaught of indie titles that pushed the button of being self aware. But what tickles me about Pony Island in particular is that…

Out of all the AAA game developers who generate DLC, you’d be hard pressed to find a company better suited for the job than Bethesda. Huge games bearing expansive and unique pieces of DLC: whether it’s the epic fantasy of the Elder Scrolls or the silent stealth of Dishonored. And obviously, the Fallout franchise is no exception.

To me, there are very few games in the world that better represent the surrealist aspect of action games than the Far Cry franchise. And to be clear: Far Cry is not The Expendibles. Far Cry is a draft of The Expendibles script as written by Hunter S. Thompson. Explosions, drugs, and an arsenal that would make Alexander The Great blush.

Let’s face it: this world is full of addictions. Sex, drugs, girl scout cookies: they’re all over the place. We’ve all got our poisons, and the XCOM franchise is one of mine. With its heavy customization and blend of city-building strategy and turn-based combat, it combines a huge number of the things that have charmed me over to the world of video games since my youth. The reboot of the original classic was released in 2012 to pretty universal praise, and the knowledge that a sequel would coming our way this year was enough to make fans like me shit an emotional brick of elerium and alien alloys. What are this sequel’s pros and cons? Well, it turns out that there’s plenty of both to go around.